122 Boating New Zealand
all manner of wooden boats out of this shed and the day I
visited him was typical of the range of work he takes on.
Tucked up the front of the shed was an 8.5m Gladden
twin-keeler, which Bagnall had lengthened to incorporate an
outboard engine well. Behind her, down the north side of the
shed, was the Parris launch Achilles which, as mentioned earlier,
was built for Bagnall’s father. At the prompting of his younger
son Mathew, Bagnall bought the Achilles a couple of years ago
and is in the process of carrying out a full restoration.
He’s lengthened Achilles’ hull by 600mm, taking her to
nine-metres overall, hopefully removing the need for trim tabs.
He’s also raised the cabin top slightly to accommodate his 1.9m
frame, opened up the interior to modernise it and replaced the
elderly 120hp Lees Marine Ford with a new 200hp Yanmar.
Besides inishing of the interior, Bagnall intends to spline and
glass the hull. “She’ll be a nice little day boat when I’ve inished.”
Next to Achilles is the Shipbuilder’s launch Equinox. She’s
having her bottom planking replaced in three-skin plywood
after going aground.
One of many tricks Bagnall has learned over the years, this
one from Jackson, is how to minimise waste when planking
multi-skin boats. Obviously, the closer a plank is to 90° to the
keel, the shorter the plank; conversely the shallower the anglethe longer the plank.
A canny boatbuilder will establish an angle-of-bottom-
planking-to-keel that best suits the planking stock he has on
hand. Depending on the lengths, he will often seek to get two
planks from one piece of timber.
Equinox’s original builder obviously knew this trick – the angle
of planking between keel and chine has been set so the bottom
planking can all be cut from the standard 2.4m length of plywood.
Outside the shed is a sloping concrete pad, which morphs
into twin railway track slips. he slips are in constant use and are
another source of income, especially as a haul-out often leads to
Bagnall being roped in to do something or other.
On my visit there were two launches hauled out for
maintenance, the Parris-built Waikaro and the Jack Jackson-built
Ramara. he slips aren’t deep enough for keelers, and these are
hauled out on the Milford Cruising Club’s (MCC) slip next door
and parked alongside its fence.
Here I found the Bob Steward-designed, Max Carter-built,
motorsailer Camelot, up for some refurbishing. Bagnall had set up
a gangplank from his smoko room roof to access Camelot’s decks.
A generation or two back, the one or two-man boatbuilder
with a waterfront shed and its own slip was a common sight- today they’re an endangered species. And up until last year
It would be nice
to show them
[youngsters] the
old skills, caulking,
planking and the
like, but they just
don’t want to know.TOP The 12m Birdsall
launch Tradition,
Bagnall’s favourite.
LEFT
The Bob Steward-
designed motorsailer
Camelot up for some
titivation.
OPPOSITE
The David Barker
painting of the Bagnall
slipway.